WASHINGTON and NEW YORK -- Broadcast and cable news organizations are
equipping themselves with newer technologies
that will play a much larger role
in the 2012 election cycle than they did in 2008, when
smartphones, social media, apps, touch screens, virtual
graphics and streaming media technologies were far less
popular. Several bigger trends in election tech can be seen
at CNN’s new control center, shown at left—which covers about 1,250
square feet—and the new studios the network has deployed
in Washington, D.C. Both were designed to handle massive
amounts of feeds and data, as well the large monitor
walls and sophisticated graphics that will play a key role in
its political and election coverage.

“The most important thing on election night is for
our anchors to have the tools they need to explain what
is happening, and why Obama may be winning one state
and Romney another,” said Sam Feist, Washington bureau
chief and senior vice president at CNN.

To achieve that goal, the new Washington,
D.C. studio, “has 270-degrees
worth of video monitors that will give
us a very large canvas on which to
display information,” he said. These
include two Perceptive Pixel Magic
Walls with touch screens
for displaying data.

The control room has
also been designed to
handle a large amount
of monitors and feeds.
It’s equipped with Sony’s
MVS-8000 production switcher,
Vizrt graphics systems, Vista’s Spyder
system to control the studio monitor
walls, Evertz for handling the monitor
walls inside the control room and TV
Logic to control producer monitoring.

AUGMENTED REALITY
Augmented reality or immersive
graphics systems, which allow virtual
monitors and other graphical elements
to be inserted in real sets, will
also figure prominently on election
night. CNN used those technologies
during the primaries, Feist said, and
they will be seen on other networks
as well.

“Many of our clients, especially the
large networks and the news organizations,
will use some virtual or
augmented reality for their coverage,”
said Isaac Hersly, president of Vizrt
Americas.

In addition to the lavish graphics
and special effects of election nights,
the networks will also use streamlined
workflows and smaller, less expensive
cameras and technologies to produce
much more content for multiple
platforms.

At the conventions, for example,
Tim Gaughan, senior producer of
special events at CBS News, said his
network used a mix of union photographers
behind more traditional
large-sensor broadcast cameras, and
journalists equipped with a variety
of prosumer HD camcorders to feed
material to multiple platforms.

“We are at the point now at CBS
where you are a multimedia journalist
no matter what department you actually
report to,” he said. “When you
are dispatched to cover a news event,
you’ll approach it with the mindset of
a multimedia journalist who is going
to serve all platforms.”

“For the
first time for this election you’ll see us delivering a big multiscreen
experience that ties all the devices together.” – Joe Ruffolo, ABC News Digital

As part of that effort, all the
broadcast networks extensively used
one-person crews throughout the
primaries. NBC embedded a number
of these reporters with candidates,
said Ryan Osborn, senior director
of digital media at NBC News. They
were generally equipped with smaller
Sony HVR-Z5 cameras and LiveU’s
backpacks that allowed them to send
back HD video for both broadcast
and digital platforms. Such efforts are
enabling the networks to dramatically
boost the amount of live streaming
coverage they supply for the Web and
mobile devices.

During the conventions, ABC
News’ digital operation streamed fourand-
a-half hours a day of coverage
from a dedicated studio as part of its
partnership with Yahoo, and streaming
will play a major role in their coverage
in the run-up to election night,
according to Joe Ruffolo, senior vice
president of ABC News Digital.

Ruffolo also stressed they will be
looking to more closely integrate their
coverage across devices. “For the first
time for this election you’ll see us delivering
a big multiscreen experience
that ties all the devices together,” he
notes.

CALLING THE RACE
Social media will be a central part
of those digital efforts as well. For
its election coverage, NBC has been
using the Mass Relevance social
integration platform to filter social
media results, and did a trial run with
Crimson Hexagon, which does sentiment
analysis of social media posts
that highlights trends in the social
conversation.

During the primaries, NBC also
formed a partnership with Foursquare
to look at the data as Republican
candidates checked into various locations
during the primary, and Osborn
expects more location-based tools to
be used in their election coverage.

“In a very short period of time,
social media has become an integral
part of the news gathering operation,”
Osborn said. But he also emphasized
that “nothing beats humans. As
important as it is to have tools to sort
through it and to have the workflows
so we can get that to any screen, our
editorial minds provide the real differentiator.”

“As important as it is
to have tools… our editorial minds provide the real differentiator.” – Ryan Osborn, NBC News

That was also the message concerning
vote-counting and race-calling
efforts.

The members of the National Election
Pool, which include the Associated
Press and the major broadcast and
cable networks, declined to discuss
how they were working to improve the
exit polls used in election coverage,
saying it was too early to describe
those systems.

Mike Oreskes, senior managing
editor for U.S. News at the Associated
Press, said that they have been
working all year to prepare for their
vote counts on election night, and
have been upgrading their internally
developed software and servers.

On Election Day, the AP will have
about 5,000 stringers collecting
vote tabulations from precincts, and
around 500 entry clerks punching in
the numbers. Two different people
with extensive knowledge of each
state are involved in calling the races,
he adds, using actual vote tallies and
exit and phone polls.

“It is rare we will call something primarily
based on exit polls,” Oreskes
said. “At the end of the day, it is still
a human effort because it is not something
you can automate.”

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The FAA’s current rules and proposed ban on flight over people, requirement of visual line of sight and restriction on nighttime flying, effectively prohibit broadcasters from using UAS for newsgathering. ~ WMUR-TV General Manager Jeff Bartlett